Baby steps to letting my baby girl grow up!
” Last day ever wearing winter uniform!!!!!”
This is the post my grade 12 daughter recently put up on facebook.
With five exclamation marks, I suggest she’s quite excited about the looming end of her schooling years, and she did get quite a lot of thumbs up from her friends.
To me there was no ‘like’ at all.
Lessons in fashion from mbff
I woke up this morning with no clue what day it was.
“Is it sunday? Are the kids at school? Why is it light? Where am I?”
After months of lead up work and a massive, manic week I was so tired I slept through and heavy.
The Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival Brisbane was over for another year.
It was exhausting, exhilarating, and entertaining, challenging, gratifying and overwhelming.
Overall it was successful and satisfying.
Under a Tuscan Storm!
We walked into the sports bar- Maria and Lucia- almost as soon as we arrived at the stunning hilltop village of San Gimignano to watch the finish of the Tour de France at Mont St Michel. It was only a 30 minute drive from the adorable Tuscan farmhouse villa we were calling home for the first five days of our Italian sojourn, so we planned to explore the village and have dinner before the return trip. But dark clouds threatening overhead as we made the drive and a TV on arrival coaxed us inside the bar.
Kingscliff- Australia’s hidden gem
With five daughters, no-one would believe we packed all of them plus the two parents (me and the hubby) into a caravan about four meters long.
But because Kingscliff is such an amazing destination for a family holiday, the annual jam into a steel box by the beach is not only achievable but desirable.
Just an hour and a bit from Brisbane or 15 minutes from the Coolangatta airport if you fly in, my family of seven continue to travel here every year even though we no longer stay at the caravan park.
Oh and if you do ever unearth this gem of a getaway, locals call it Kingy!
The surprises when your teenager has a boyfriend..
The youngest now has a boyfriend.
It’s only a week into the blossoming relationship and the first flowers have been delivered.
Sweet, you might say, but what about if the flowers left on the front porch weren’t for her …..
Kids are like a box of chocolates!
Most of the time you do know what you are going to get, but it’s the surprises that make parenting memorable.
In this case, the alarm went off at 4.15 am.
It does most mornings in our house, with the two youngest girls rowing and either the hubby or I driving bleary-eyed teenagers in the cold and the dark to the boat shed.
But on this day I was up at that time to get to the race-track. Read More
One daughter down!
The backpack!
It’s now been four months and 20 days since the second eldest daughter emptied her room, donated clothing to her sisters and the salvos, packed a backpack and left the family.
It’s been ( except for the 2 weeks we spent surrounded by thousands on a cruise ship and in a resort in cancun) a much more lonely four months and 20 days without her.
Here are the top 10 things I miss.
Anti-ageing birthdays
He walked into the bedroom brandishing a golden box tied in a silky red ribbon.
My husband looked pleased with himself as he presented my birthday present to me and I excitedly clambered up onto the pillow to give myself more elbow room to open it.
“Happy Birthday Darling!” he explained.
“Wow!” I exclaimed back.
Payback- the teen mobile phone plan!!!
The mobile phone bill popped into my inbox this month for teenage daughter number 4, and it was $160 over the monthly $30 limit.
“I didn’t hardly make any calls this month,” is the first response.
Quickly followed by, “It’s a stupid plan.”
On closer inspection of the breakdown of the bill, the excess has come from $450 worth of texting.
The Bangkok hit-list. How many nights is enough?
Admission… Bangkok wasn’t on my hit-list of must-see places in the world.
The line in the song, “One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster” was enough of a deterrent. I hate oysters and my expectations of the city itself were deep-sea low.
However, when your husband makes a surprise holiday booking to visit friends in Singapore, those friends return to Australia after a decade away, and you’ve been to Singapore numerous times, serendipity becomes the travel agent of choice and Bangkok became our destiny.
So, we changed our flight, went for more than one night, (in fact five) and it just goes to prove that fate is best left to work when it’s not on a hit-list.
View from the river cruise
Karryn Wheelans 